Modern mastering sounds great ! ! !

  • Thread starter Thread starter chessrock
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chessrock

Banned
Say,

After getting a chance to listen to buch of newer music stuff over the past several months and weeks . . .


All I can say is GREAT JOB to all the mastering engineers out there!

What's that thing all of them are using? A limter, is it?

Well, I'll be damned! You know, all these years, I've been hoping someone would come along and make music a little easier for me to listen to. I don't know if my ears can handle such sudden drastic changes in volume as are evident on most of the rock music I grew up listening to.

In fact, I much prefer having everything pretty much at one, steady, even volume level. And preferably as loud as possible, of course, so that it never gets too soft for me to hear.

I'm so glad we got them mastering engineer guys. :D Keep up the good work, fellas!
 
The MEs don't like it any more than audiophiles do -- it's label pressure that drives those insane decisions...... if an ME wants to stay in business, they have no choice, otherwise the label will take it down the street to someone who will do it.
 
Well I'm sure glad none of 'em have decided to stand up to the record people and refuse to compromize themselves.


Otherwis, I might have to turn my volum knob up a couple decibals, and I'm not sure it will go up that high! Mine only goes to 10. :D
 
Easy does it. Hopefully it only really hurts some of the time.
Wayne
 
To make sure no one experiences unpleasant variations in volume levels, we will have the mastering engineers remove any dynamics.

To make sure no one hears a note that is too high or too low (Someone may hear a note they don't like), we will make every song based around one note. (I vote for B flat myself.)

All vocals will be reduced to a chanted 'oooooohhhmmmm' to eliminate lyrics and phrasing that may be jarring to the listener.

The first 'oooohms in B flat' cd will be available from timewarnersonyvivendiuniversal in late november. Pre-release airplay can be heard on all clear channel radio stations at the end of October. Stop complaining and give us your $15. Thank you for shopping at walmart.
 
A man's gotta eat chessrock - I don't like it much either, but I don't think the MEs can do that much about it. Like the Bear said - they'll just take it to someone else who'll do it.

It's a cycle, and it will change in time.
 
Hopefully the motion picture industry will pick up on this trend sometime soon. I am so damn sick and tired of watching a move at 2 in the morning with the volume up fairly high so I can hear the whisper like speach, only to have a mad blast of techno music come on that could wake the dead!
 
I too love the way the newly mastered stuff sounds! The new Audioslave CD is a sonic masterpiece!

I've found a way to actually "IMPROVE" the listening to the newly mastered music, and I highly recommend everyone try this with their home stereo system!

Here I what I do:

I use my Behringer Multicom(for signal quality) an hook this up to the stereo outs of my CD player. I then patch these outs to the record ins of my tape deck(I duct tape the record an play down becase I get a high quality line level signal coming from my Multicom) This signal is then dropped using my tape decks level control...

Then, I use the out of the tape deck and go the my stereo's receiver and then speakers!

I set the Multicom at 8:1 ratio with a 4 dB boost! WOW!

The setup vastly improves the sound of newly mastered CD's!

In fact, it can even make older CD's sound like newly mastered CD's

I'm in sonic Bliss!

Shred :)
 
chessrock said:
Well I'm sure glad none of 'em have decided to stand up to the record people and refuse to compromize themselves.
Click to expand...

I don't think it all just the ME's. Alot of the Engineers like Rick Rueben are quashing the 2 bus and then asking the ME to squash it more, and then limit to a -.01. I got Mudvayne's LD 5.0 and started listenening to it and looking at levels and eq curves because I set up to produce a similar band in October.
Whoa mooly batgirl....I had to seriously zoom in to see if there was actually wave's, a lesser video card would have caught fire trying to redraw it! There are enough ME's out there trying to convince the clients and mooks that what they are doing is harmful to the music and unpleasing to the listener. Anyone you understands radio processing see's the problem with these hypercompressed and limited songs.

I admit that some of the heavier industrial and Nu-metal music needs to have this kinda processing done. But, any other style needs to have some dynamic range.

SoMm
 
Don't get me wrong. I think just about anything is alright in moderation. :D
 
Outlaws said:
Hopefully the motion picture industry will pick up on this trend sometime soon. I am so damn sick and tired of watching a move at 2 in the morning with the volume up fairly high so I can hear the whisper like speach, only to have a mad blast of techno music come on that could wake the dead!
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I was just gonna say that. I am always riding the volume with the remote control. I wonder if I could hook up a compressor to the VCR.
 
tjohnston said:
I was just gonna say that. I am always riding the volume with the remote control. I wonder if I could hook up a compressor to the VCR.
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If it's too loud your too old. No self respecting audiophile would allow anyone else to interfere with their ability to play loud music and movies at any given moment of the day or night.

A man has to have priorities.
 
yea but the special effects sounds are so loud that it jiggles my balls!
 
Yea, for some of us, that's about the only action our balls are seeing lately.
 
Well other then the ridiculous amounts of compression put on these songs, another problem is radio stations are fighting their competition for 'loudest station' and are compressing all they're music over air (to keep volume changes to a minimum and -more likely- to out perform their competition radio stations.)
When public are scanning across the waves apparantly they're more likely to sit and listen to a louder station!
No not only is there this enourmous compression when mastering but when we hear is on the radio we're getting another lot.

I actually like the large dynamic range in movies! It really helps to portray the story...

I was doing some reading the other day to see how long this 'loud as you can' attitude has been going on for... I read an article on Gus Dudgeon (Producer of Elton John) talking about his efforts on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road Album saying 'I'm very proud of this, its the LOUDEST album i've made yet'

Has this been going on for this long??? It seems to me yes!

I want the music to be about the musician and the emotion, dynamics to me are as important as the music itself!
IMHO
Scott Mellish
 
I hate it when the commercials aren't all the same volume . . . or when all the commercials are suddenly ten times louder than the show.

What a pain in the ass having to ride the volume fader on the remote all the time.
 
chessrock said:
I hate it when the commercials aren't all the same volume . . . or when all the commercials are suddenly ten times louder than the show.

What a pain in the ass having to ride the volume fader on the remote all the time.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I actually change the channel when commercials get to loud. So in some respects, they are loosing money on me becasue I will actually buy the compeditors product for the simple reason that I find the overly loud commercials to be disrespectful.

But for movies I am all up for some dynamic range but seriously........so of them are getting rediculous. A certain amount does help...as in, a bomb needs a good thud!......but the range is soooooooo far overblown that it is another game of whose got the biggest sound effects and low frequencies, much the same way it was with fire-y explosions 10 years ago. And to further my frustration........I hate all these new "artsy" BS cutaways that movies have now. I can't keep my bearings anymore...I feel like I am riding a rollercoaster than is not even on a track. And then there is the triple explosion...............right...one feul tank in a car explodes three times. MY ASS!
 
I transcribe music all day long and the software I use shows the wave during playback. It's getting painful to listen to this shit.

I was working on a Smashing Pumkins song yesterday and by the time it got to the chorus BC's reedy voice and highly distorted guitars blended to sound exactly like it was half music, half static. It was compressed to the point that it was nearly white noise. I just don't get it.

When I load a file anymore and see the wave coming toward the play cursor I squint my eyes a little just to brace for the pain. I try to explain to my students that they are being short changed by this music. Some of this stuff is like staring into the sun or the sonic equilalent of a sunset on an extremely hazy afternoon.

Can they do this to vinyl? I think there is a phyical limit to how much signal you can put into that medium. Maybe I'll get a turntable.

Someone has to sign off on a final mastering, right? Who is responsible? Someone listens to the final master besides the ME, is it the producer?

I heard Daniel Lanois' latest record and it sounds fantastic but I can find no direct mastering credit. Only a listing under helpful friends: "Doug Sax & Robert Hadley at The Mastering Lab". Actually, all the credits are spare at best. He seemed to produce a dynamic recording in 2003. Apparently it's still possible.

On the other side of things Stevie Wonder's "In the city" is amazing. A rather inspiring student wanted to know how to play the keyboard parts on guitar. That guy makes my Wednesday every week.

Cheers, RD
 
Son of Mixerman said:
I had to seriously zoom in to see if there was actually wave's, a lesser video card would have caught fire trying to redraw it!

SoMm
Click to expand...

I think that is part of the problem, now that you can see the wave in a digital editor, everyone gets paid by how much their sound wave resembles a 2x4.... slap that digital limiter in there and crush it into submission.... and them maybe listen to it... the really good MEs can get away with it, the rest try miserably to keep up....
 
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